Been to a gamejam from Thursday to Saturday. So here are some tilesheets I made. Our game actually won first place. The theme was "Transition" and we made this isometric game about a fox that has to activate those magical ponds to regrow the greenery.

Wow these are looking great. The tiles that are sitting on top of the grass tiles look weird, since they're overriding the top of the grass below them it looks like they're floating above the grass tiles...

How very strange, I just named my newest edition to my character roster Astrid...

It's pretty (and clean too. How do you get your stuff so clean-edged?), but you have major silhouette problems with her left plated metal arm disappearing into the plated metal monster's body. It's also not helped by the stark white background which makes the whole piece dark by comparison, making it difficult to see the details on the arm that'd let us separate out the two.

I don't have much else to say though. Maybe work on the stone rendering a bit? Looks awfully shiny for something just yanked out of the floor. Nice job!

How very strange, I just named my newest edition to my character roster Astrid...

It's pretty (and clean too. How do you get your stuff so clean-edged?), but you have major silhouette problems with her left plated metal arm disappearing into the plated metal monster's body. It's also not helped by the stark white background which makes the whole piece dark by comparison, making it difficult to see the details on the arm that'd let us separate out the two.

I don't have much else to say though. Maybe work on the stone rendering a bit? Looks awfully shiny for something just yanked out of the floor. Nice job!

heh. I just derived the closest cool name from Astaroth/Ishtar on whom thi character is based. I am pretty sure that hey use the same proto indo european root of -sta for star.

There are several things to getting nice edges. First is controlling your shadows and volume. This goes before you start properly rendering anything. I do that in greyscale. I also used separate layers on the shape of the torso, on skin etc. I got rid of that division pretty early on, but it helped to keep it together (I painted the pauldrons over the more-or less finished piece and they still look crisp, because the foundations were there). A lot depends on the values. So if you are struggling with it, even though you meticulously try to keep your edges sharp, maybe some of the other stuff is wrong. Try to work as efficiently as possible. Too many uncontrolled brushstrokes can ruin the sharpest edge. Also feel free to use the lasso tool. I don't think I used it in this piece, but it is a great way to make crips cuts. I always kept a layer of each larger shape under the painting itself so I can create a selection any time and work on a particular bit without having to worry about my strokes messing up the rest.